Athlete at Home? 3 Ways Parents Can Maintain or Develop Their Athlete

Summary

• In these times, sports may be on hold. This should not stop the development of your young athlete.
• Athletes are strong physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. With this as your framework, you can continue to develop your athlete.
• Physically: keep them moving. It doesn’t have to be intense. Physical play can be the best thing for an athlete. Get them to play and be creative.
• Mentally & Emotionally: watch a good sports movie. Notice the player or team going through ups and downs to achieve their ultimate goal or success. After watching, discuss future goals with your kid. Goals can be on and off the field. Talk about obstacles they may come across on their journey to their goal. This will allow them to ready for obstacles and understand is part of their story.
• Socially: connect with others. All of the above can be done with others. How they connect may change depending on the situation. One time it may in-person, the next online.
• As parents, we always invest in our kids. Just because a sport is on hold or off-season, doesn’t mean we cannot continue to invest in our kids. We aren’t here to invest in the sport.

Full Transcript

In these uncertain times, are you helping maintain or develop your kid into an athlete? In this video, we're going to go over three things that can help. Hey everybody, my name's David Sabi, here with Kid to Athlete, helping parents raise athletes. I've always believed that parents have the best opportunity to raise an athlete. And with these times, it seems like that's the only way that we can get our kids to become athletes, is by parenting them into one, which is great. But if you don't know how, that's what this video is going to go over. Now, the reason we want to build an athlete is so that when it's time, they can go to the coach. They can go into whatever sport they're playing and the coach can fine-tune them. Fine-tune them into a soccer player, a football player, basketball, baseball.

There are so many sports, right? Swimming. It doesn't matter what sport, but if the coach gets an athlete, it's a lot easier to fine-tune them into becoming a champion. A trophy raising medal wearing MVP star. So that's what we're looking for, is to develop that athlete so that when it's time to get back into the sports, we've got an athlete that the coaches can work with.

So let's get into it. The first one is physically, what do you do? You got to keep them moving. Let's not complicate things. Just keep them moving. Really, that's all it is. And you want them to be moving in all different directions. You want them to be moving every which way, using all their joints, full range of motion. The more they can move, the better. And if you're not a strength and conditioning coach or a coach, or personal trainer or whatnot, that's okay. Just keep them moving. And one of the best ways? Play. Just let them play. Play on the playground, climb on things, jump around, make up games, right?

If you want to incorporate your sport, if you're a soccer player, grab a soccer ball, do some stuff with the ball, be creative. And that's one of the best things you can also do, is just make stuff up. Just let them move. Let their mind go and let them play. Now, if you are, let's say, a coach or you feel comfortable working with your kid with the weights and you don't mind running with them and all that stuff if your intensity is up there, one thing I would definitely recommend is to make sure you add the recovery because we can push our kids physically pretty hard. But if we don't add the recovery, that could be a little dangerous. So just make sure you remember recovery is part of the training program, especially when it comes to the physical aspect.

So that's the first one. Number two, mentally and emotionally, what can you do to help develop an athlete? Because remember an athlete is more than physical. They are more than strength and stamina. They are more than just skill work in whatever sport they're playing. Sports is a mental game, and emotions have a lot to do with sports basically because you are going to have every emotion. If you play sports long enough, you're going to go through every emotion that you can imagine. So what we're looking at in this activity is basically watching a sports movie. Now, it doesn't seem like much, but what you're looking at doing is you're watching the progression, because everybody goes through a journey. Whether it's a single person or a team, they go through good times, bad times.

They're hitting obstacles here and there. And then they're overcoming, they're continuing. They meet somebody that believes in them, and then they go through a couple more obstacles, and then they finally reached the goal, the dream. Then, hopefully in the movie, they succeed. But what I really want you to do is pay attention to how they are emotionally reacting in the movie, and think of how mental it is. What you're really doing is to get through obstacles and to get through those hard times, it's really more of a mental game, not necessarily physical. What you're looking at is those mental and emotional aspects of the movie. And then afterward, what I would suggest is start talking to your kid about their goals, their dreams. You can do this for goals on and off the field, and you can mentally prepare them for their obstacles, their hard times.

When they are mentally prepared when those obstacles come, or any obstacles, they'll know, hey, this is part of the story. If they understand that there are different emotions that come into play, then they're more likely to know that they have a choice, and they can respond a certain way. So again, a movie is a nice way just to kind of open that up for you to discuss.

Now, number three is social. Social is basically just connecting. You're connecting with your teammates. You're connecting with coaches, coaching staff, trainers, whoever is part of that world of sports. You can do everything I basically mentioned before. You can keep them moving, but you're just moving with a friend or a teammate or family member. And watch a movie. You can watch it with a friend or a teammate or family member.

Now, if he can't get literally together, that shouldn't be a problem. Again, if you're physically playing a game, make up games, challenge each other. So you could do something, share with a friend, see if they can do it. And you're going back and forth. If you play soccer and you're trying to keep the ball off the ground, then see how many times you can tap it before it hits the ground, challenge your friend.

It's really just connecting and watching a movie. Again, recommend movies, watch this and talk about it. Talk about your goals. Again, just connecting with others. And those are just three suggestions I have for helping maintain or develop your kid into an athlete. And that keeps them moving, watch a good sports movie and connect with others. And that's really a good start to helping your kid.

Now, we always invest in our kids, not sports. So if sports aren't there, that's fine. We're not investing in sports. We are always investing in our kids, and that's what we need to focus on. Investing in our kids to be an athlete. And why do we want them to be an athlete? Because what you're doing is you're taking all these different elements, like physical, mental, emotional, and social aspects, and an athlete just ramps them all up.

Athletes have a great amount of strength and control, physically, mentally, emotionally, and socially. And so that's why I really suggest that you continue to invest in your kid, and help them develop into an athlete. And so with that, hit that subscribe button if you haven't, and please leave a comment below. Let me know what your favorite sports movie is. Whether it's a new one, an old one, a classic. Let me know and let me know why. And I'll see you on the next video. Take care.